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Even 43pc of satisfied customers still skip online pre-roll ads: report

With much attention being paid to the millennial and Gen Z demographic?s imperviousness to video advertising, a new report from MarketingSherpa confirms many marketers? worst fears.

With much attention being paid to the millennial and Gen Z demographic?s imperviousness to video advertising, a new report from MarketingSherpa confirms many of marketers? worst fears.

For the survey, MarketingSherpa split 2,400 U.S. consumers into two groups: One group of 1,200 was asked, "Of the companies with which you are generally satisfied, how often do you disengage with their marketing by doing the following?" The other group of 1,200 was asked, "Of the companies with which you are generally unsatisfied, how often do you disengage with their marketing by doing the following?"

?For unsatisfied customers, millennials were least likely to say they ?Always? skip online pre-roll ads ? 29 percent of unsatisfied millennials skip, while 34 percent of Generation X and 37 percent of Baby Boomers skip online-pre-roll ads if they are unsatisfied customers of the company running the ad,? said Daniel Burstein, senior director of editorial content at MarketingSherpa. ?These aren?t major differences, but they could suggest that millennials tend to consider the format itself, while other generations are less focused on the format and more interested in the company running the ad. 

?If they are satisfied with the company, they are more likely to watch and if they are unsatisfied, they are more likely to skip.?

Combating intertia
The survey found that unsatisfied customers were more likely to often or always disengage with every channel they were asked about. For example, 33 percent of satisfied customers never or rarely unsubscribe from email, while 13 percent of unsatisfied customers said the same, meaning that a satisfied customer is 154 percent more likely to stay on a company's email list than an unsatisfied customer.

Skipping online pre-rolls ads was one of the top ways customers disengaged overall; 51 percent of unsatisfied customers skipped this form of online video marketing, while 43 percent of satisfied customers did. Online ad blocking, which has become a major concern for the marketing and advertising industry, was the fifth-most frequently disengaged with channel (out of 12) according to consumers.

Geico is known for their pre-roll ads

?Not surprisingly, customer satisfaction has an impact on important business metrics,? Mr. Burstein said. ?For example, we found that 66 pecent of satisfied customers were very likely to continue purchasing products and services from a company, while only 8 percent of unsatisfied customers were very likely.

?As you can see from the data above, customers? satisfaction also has an impact on email marketing and online pre-roll ads. In other words, an email, video, or digital marketer might be engaging in all the best practices they think they should follow, but their marketing investments will underperform because customers are not satisfied with their brand in general.?

Pre-roll ads
Platforms seem to have heard news of the precariousness of pre-roll advertising early. YouTube is dropping support for the 30-second unskippable ad format, phasing it out over the course of the year, meaning video marketers will have to adjust their strategy to fit shorter video formats (see story). 

Advertisers have also been slowly migrating to other ad platforms. Facebook-owned mobile messaging application WhatsApp has adopted its own version of Snapchat's stories feature, also recently appearing on Instagram, allowing marketers more platforms to cater to social media users (see story). 

YouTube is phasing out 30-second unskippable pre-roll ads

?Marketing and advertising usually have a bad name among customers,? Mr. Burstein said. ?However, it?s not really marketing and advertising that customers have a distaste for: what they really hate is thinking that they?re being tricked, swindled, or bamboozled. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of.

?Marketing can be a service to customers when it helps them make the best decision for them in an incredibly complex marketplace,? he said. ?That means that marketers need to get an authentic message to the people who will benefit from it most. 

?This isn?t simply targeting customers, its elevating customers and putting their needs, goals, and desires at the forefront of every marketing campaign.?